--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Machined to Think” a new exhibition opened to visitors

On the occasion of the National Technology day a new exhibition “ Machined to Think”, which provides a birds eye view into the technologies that are destined to usher in what is now hailed as the "fourth industrial revolution", was inaugurated by Padma Vibhushan, Dr Anil Kakodkar Sir, on the 9th of May @3:00 PM at the Nehru Science Centre.

The extraordinary pace of technological change in the so-called fourth industrial revolution, which was articulated by Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, holds great promise for India. We have already reaped great benefits from IT, which is exemplified from the term Bangalored, which has found its way in the lexicon of English dictionary. We will have greater and new opportunities in the fourth industrial revolution to achieve success in fields like agriculture and rural growth, at an accelerated speed and transition toward high yield productivity and other rural economic benefits. This will mean a lot to India, which has almost 60% of its population living in rural areas with agriculture as their main profession.

The combination of IoT technologies, digital tools, robotics, machine intelligence and 5G networks and all their building blocks, which will be central to the fourth industrial revolution, will provide a wealth of opportunities for cooperation between machined to think technologies and humans to bring about a paradigm shift and vastly improve productivity and speed up the delivery of services for the welfare of our citizens. It is therefore necessary that students in particular and public at large are prepared to face the many diverse and fascinating challenges in understanding this new technological revolution to cope up and shape the fourth industrial revolution. It is this necessity of educating the public about the fourth industrial revolution, which is likely to fundamentally change the way we live, work, and relate to one another, that we at the Nehru Science Centre decided to curate the Machined to Think Gallery. The scale, scope and complexity of the fourth industrial revolution, some experts predict, will be something which the humankind has never experienced before.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution or the Industry 4.0, will also be the new benchmark in production, which will be an outcome of the many groundbreaking concepts that have resulted in a quantum leap in the networking of humans, machines, robots and products. Harvesting the Internet backbone, the Industry 4.0 will be leveraging on new technologies across the complete value chain from suppliers to customers, to significantly increase the flexibility of the production line, and shorten production lead times leading to more affordable and scalable customization in both goods and services.

India which missed out on the first three Industrial revolutions - the first one at the end of the 18th century, which led to the advent of mechanization (courtesy the steam engine) that resulted in industrial production, the second one at the beginning of the 20th century, when true mass production began with automotive manufacturing where assembly line production became a paradigm for mass production and the third one the silicon age that ushered in the dawn of digital age and IT, can not and should not miss the fourth industrial revolution. We are already witnessing great advances in computing power, connectivity, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, 3-D printing, geographic information system, and other technologies. These technologies will enable us to leapfrog over many older technologies, in the same way that cellphones have made it unnecessary to install landlines. Such impactful change needs proactive public policy to build on the positive aspects of the new industrial revolution while preventing the further widening of the already large gap between the skilled and unskilled. We hope our new Gallery will help in this initiative.